Trudging through the deep snow I, Richard Garland, rubbed my hands together to warm up. The blizzard wrath slammed against me in every direction. I was just kicked out of a cheap motel, the kind that would most likely have stains on the walls. Getting caught pocketing the owners wallet, I was quickly booted out into the dark and cold night. In a feeble attempt to keep from freezing to death I blew on my fists like a harmonica when I saw the green glow.The 7-11 sign’s light reflected of the slippery ice and filled the parking lot. No cars were parked there yet the lights were still on. I moved my stiff legs, bringing me closer to the doors. Swinging the door open, the warm air rushed at me. Stepping in the cashier looked up and examined me. Hurrying around one of the shelves to escape the cashier’s gaze, I picked up a magazine. It had an article on aliens and U.F.Os. I pretended to read it so the man at the counter would look somewhere else. I never was really interested in aliens, I never thought about if there was life on other planets. Humans had enough trouble on their own. Shoving the magazine into my jacket pocket, I turned around. The cashier was right in front of me.“I’m so sorry.” I cried fearfully, holding the magazine in my pocket. The cashier walked closer and I started to back up into the corner. He was coming closer. I held my hands out to stop him and my arms went through. He faded out as a headache flared into my brain. I clutched my head and fell to my knees. Pain seared from my head as I took of my fedora and threw it to the ground. My head throbbed when I slowly stood up. Stumbling to the exit I slammed the door open. I dived onto the freezing pile of snow. Scooping a huge handful, I dumped on my balding scalp. The pain was not dimmed. Just as I thought the worst of it was over a blinding flash of green light shone and filled the whole block. My headache was on fire again. When my eyes slightly adjusted I looked to the sky. Rubbing my eyes, a blurry and bright object flew around in the sky. As I was questioning my sanity, the light seemed to focus on me. Getting brighter and brighter, my brain hurt more and more. That’s when I blacked out.I woke on what seemed to be an operating table. I tried to escape but couldn’t, even though I was not shackled. My vision was more blurred than before. I could hardly make out anything. Above me was a large mechanical arm type thing. It had a large green robotic eye and some sharp thing to match. It kept yelling something over and over, but I could not understand it. “Prepa…for…dis…tion.” My head pounded and I felt like I was almost fainting every breath. The sharp thing started to spin as it came closer and closer. I was freaking out and shaking violently when the magazine fell out of my pocket. The machines eye spun to the magazine. It quickly shut down and fell limp. I tried getting up, and it worked. I jumped to my feet and scanned the room for an exit. It was hard because my vision was still mucky and my head was screaming at me. I saw a hallway and I ran through it. As I was running I wondered why the magazine scared it so. Did it think it was a weapon? Maybe the robot thought it was a bomb. I didn’t know but it saved my life. Turning the corner, the lights suddenly shut off. The blurry eyes didn’t matter anymore, I couldn’t see anything anyway. I slowed down as I ran out of breath down the dark, dark hallway. I heard the same thing the robot was saying to me, when I was on the operating table, down the hallways on either side of me. This time I could hear it more clearly.“Prepare for dissection. Prepare for dissection. Prepare for dissection.” It kept repeating. The buzz of the saws filled the hallways and poured into my ears. Screams of the dying ripped through my head.“I need to get out of here.” I muttered to myself, rubbing my temples trying to calm the pain. As I was going to start to run, a room letting blue light run out the door caught my attention. I slowly walked to it and peeked in. It was another dissecting robot, this time with a blue eye. It was active. A man was ripped open and his organs were spread across the table. Blood dripped off and landed on the floor, forming a puddle. I gritted my teeth at the sight, but I was more interested on the thing behind the scene. It was on a counter type thing, kind of like a podium. A crystal ball. It could fit in your palm. It was so pretty, so beautiful. I need it. No! What are you thinking? It’s just a crystal ball! You need to get out of here alive! I argued with myself till the kleptomaniac side won. I snuck in, creeping along the wall. I was getting closer and closer to the ball as the robot continued to dig around in the man’s corpse. I could get my hands on it! I was so exited. I was arms length away from it. I reached my arm out, keeping one eye on the ball and one on the dissector. My fingers were just touching it. I started to roll it toward myself, and that’s when the plan fell apart. The ball dropped and crashed against the floor. The sound of the saw stopped and its eye landed on me. It stared at me, almost showing an emotion of anger. Its saw started to spin and it started yelling"Prepare for dissection." I leaped over the corpse, dodging the robot and continuing through the door. "Escaped specimen. Escaped specimen. Escaped specimen." A voice stated in the same tone as the dissectors. My spine felt like it was broken as I ran down the hallway. I hadn't noticed how my headache had gone away when I saw the ball. But now it was worse than when it started. Every heart beat pumped more blood into my head and made my brain explode with pain. I almost ripped my hair out because it diverted the pain.If I didn't go into any of the dissection rooms, I thought, I could be safe. It appeared that the robots couldn't move, that they were immobile. I was safe, as long as the robots were the only thing in whatever that place was. I could be safe."Releasing the weapon. Prepare for dissection." The voice interrupted my thoughts. Weapon? What weapon? I started to hurry down the walkway, as the roof above me started to shake, as if something was running up there. My face started to sweat and my legs felt weary. Does this ever end? The footsteps got louder above me, when a tile behind me dropped to the floor. I didn't look back. The footsteps were now behind me, getting closer. In an attempt to get farther away, drifted around the corner into a brighter hallway. "Get away from me!" I yelled as I snuck a peek at the thing behind me. All I caught of it was it had large teeth and long eyes. It ran on all fours and had a long spiky tail. It was hideous. I pulled the ball out of my pocket just to look at something beautiful to get that disgusting and horrible thing out of my mind. It felt like something was pounding on the inside of my skull, screaming at me to get out of this place. The creature clawed at my foot when it got close enough and pulled of my shoe. I tried to adjust but it slowed me down a lot. The monster got closer. "At least I won’t freeze to death, wandering the street. This way I will just get 'dissected'." I thought to myself.A door! It looked like a sliding door. I needed to get our of there. I pulled open the door I was stunned. I was staring into space. I could see the earth, green and blue, and the sun. The sun was so bright. Brighter than anything you can imagine. I had to shield my eyes from it, and it still irritated me. The stars they were so amazing. There are so many of them. Suddenly, I tumbled toward the door, my legs burning from the claws digging into it. The monster had leaped at me, tackling me into space.My eyes shot open. Breathing in and out, my eyes became less blurry. Wiping the drool of my face I tried to sit up on the bed, expecting one of the dissectors to be there. I couldn't sit up, there was too much pain. My back ached as if someone beat me with a bat. I was shocked."Help!" I yelled as a woman popped into my eyesight, "Are you here to save me?""What are you talking about? You’re in the hospital." She replied kindly."But, the robot, and the monster. Where was I?" I questioned, confused out my mind. She looked to her hands, paused, and looked up again."You were hit by a car. That spine of yours almost snapped in half. You were in a coma for a month," She stated,” You’re lucky to be alive.""Can I walk?" I asked, worried that I will not be able to do anything anymore."Not now, but you will be recuperated in a few months." She said smiling.I nodded, to end the conversation, and she walked away. As she was in the doorway she turned and exclaimed,"Oh! I almost forgot. Your things are stored in that box on your bedside table." She left as I pulled the box onto my lap. If I was going to be laying there for a few months, I might as well get something to read. I pulled the lid open and searched for the magazine. It was no where to be found. The only things that were in there were my hat, trench coat, and bandana. I dumped the contents onto the bed and a quiet clink sounded from the sides of the bed. I reached my hand down and grabbed the source of the sound. I brought it up to my face. It was a small crystal ball.

The Duck

Spoiler:

The Duck

My steps echoed through the empty streets as I fumbled with my shiny new porcelain duck. I had just "borrowed" it from a man I met in the drug store. It was earlier that night and the stores were soon closing. I was admiring the bracelet on a woman looking at magazines, and that’s when I saw it. The duck. It had a shiny yellow paint job and it could fit in your palm. It looked so fragile and perfect sitting on the counter. I couldn't stop staring at it. I needed it. I was trying to tell myself that it was worthless, but it didn't work. The man carrying the duck strode out of the store and I followed in his footsteps.

Starting to jog to catch up with him, I formulated a plan of how to get it. I came up behind him and started to run as if I had to catch a ride. Bumping into him he dropped the duck, but I quickly caught it before it hit the ground and I then hid it in my sleeve.

"Sorry," I lied lifting him to his feet, "I wasn't looking were I was going!"

"Where's the duck!" He yelled frantically, searching the sidewalk. I shrugged.

"Help me look!" He screamed.

"I have to catch my bus." I responded as I turned and ran. After I was around the corner and out of sight, I inspected the duck. Stroking my goatee with one hand and turning the duck around with the other I spotted something. The price tag. My skin went ghostly white. It was one of the most valuable things I had stolen to date! My hands started to sweat. It read in big red letters: $3,999. I dropped the duck into my satchel, almost as if I was hiding from it. Putting my face in my hands, I leaned against the brick wall. I racked my mind on what to do, giving myself a headache. Then suddenly, as if a light bulb appeared over my head, I got it! All I had to do was dump it on Croaker!

Croaker was a hobo living in the alleyway between the Chinese restaurant and the shoe store. I had already stolen my fair share of his things and gotten to know him a little bit. According to him and the other hobos that know him, he has had about thirteen heart-attacks in the last ten years, hence the nickname. He is also a heavy drinker.

I started off to the pub, I needed to get this guy drunk out of his wits. I quickly stole three bottles of vodka and walked to the alleyway where Old Croak's box, or house, was.

"Get out'a here, you piece of..." He muttered at me with his eyes half closed and laying under his blanket.

"Look what I got!" I said with a sing-song voice, shaking the bottles in my hands. Leaping to his feet he said politely,

"Take a seat, Rich old friend!" Taking a seat on the ground I offered him a bottle. In the span of two hours, Croaker drank three bottles of vodka, then told be about his childhood, and sang me a song that made my eardrums want to burst, and finally fall asleep.

I started my plan as soon as his eyes closed. Pulling of my trench coat, I slipped it over his shirt and then took of my fedora and plopped it on his head. I opened my satchel and grasped the duck.

"It’s so perfect." I said under my breath as I pulled it out. The obnoxious, loud sound of a police siren filled the air, pulling me out of my dream like state. Sighing, I placed it in Croaker's hand and stood up.

******

Shivering early in the morning a week later, I was missing my coat. I was thinking of all the things I would do that day when I saw him. Croaker was walking down the street with a new fancy suit, combed hair, a suitcase, and apparently, a job. Confused I asked him how this happened.

“When I woke up, after we drank, I found a small porcelain duck sitting in my hand and, curiously, your clothes on my body." He replied, with much more energy than he had the week before, “I tracked down the owner, turned out he's a very rich man and he gave me a huge reward and a job at his firm! Can you believe it?"

Walking away from Croaker, muttering to myself how unfair life is, something in the corner of my eye attracted me. My eyes widened. It was amazing, it was perfect, it was a small porcelain dog.

Lies

Spoiler:

The clacking of the keyboard that echoed through the room sounded rushed and hurried. The man was trembling at the thought that they would find him. He had to get the truth out. Suddenly the windows throughout the house smashed as masked men with machine guns burst through. Leaping behind a counter the man pulled out a shiny pistol from his pocket. The email was sent. He had completed his mission. Bullets whistled over his head and ripped through the wall behind him. It wouldn’t matter if he died now, the people would know of their treachery. Taking a quick look out the window the man could see a helicopter firing bullets at the house. They wanted him dead. He knew the secret. After a bullet almost skimmed his ear the man decided to make a run for it. He started off through the hallway, a wall of bullets behind him. He threw the door open and sped to his dark red car. After starting the ignition he sped up the drive way. Soon the back left wheel was punctured, air escaping like prisoners running from a rioting prison. He zoomed down the highway as fast as he could with a broken tire. Struggling to keep control of the car on the snowy highway a bullet burst through the back window and lodged itself into his neck. Snow flew into the air as he crashed into the ditch. In his last few minutes alive he knew he had done his job. He had told the people of the lies, the horrible lies.

Everyone is Dead

Spoiler:

Every one is dead, everyone. Not one single person alive on earth other than me. You might say there is no reason to be writing this if there is no one to write to, right? But it passes my lonely time. It started about two months ago. Everyone just thought it was a new flu like the others but this was more, much more. It was not talked a lot about by the media like H1N1. They didn’t want another swine flu craze. After about twenty people died, everyone got their “vaccines”. It didn’t work. I think they were just water they were injecting into them. About fifty more people died. This was when the craziness started. People clamored for a new vaccine. The scientists worked on another. Again, it didn’t work. Humans dropping like flies all around the world. You’re chance of survival dropped drastically. There was a one in fifty survival rate. Towns started burning bodies and closed airports, buses and ship transports. People alive plummeted from around six billion to two billion.

We were doomed until the amazing miracle healing vaccine came out! Sarcasm is implied in the last sentence. They tested it on mice and it worked. But that was mice. For humans it did not work as well. People started taking it and died almost the next day. I was brought up to never use vaccines and leave it to God to take your sickness away. I think God was on vacation. People stopped having babies because almost two seconds after they were born they would die. No new people were replacing the ones that were dying. To get food for just one day you had to travel from town to town and scavenge for crumbs and leftovers. Even that was risky because the flu, now called the Black Flu, was easily transmitted through food. Usually people tried to grow their own food with the little seeds they could find. After the new conditions became ordinary to all of us it seemed the Black Flu evolved in some way, attacking people it ordinarily didn’t, killing people faster and even giving them a painful death. It now gave painful sores and rashes to the people who got it. The infected would have stomach aches like bombs going off in their belly. You would die crying now. Usually you would see about two to three people every two towns. But then it seemed as if every town was a complete ghost town. I looked for miles until I found one dying little boy. I sat down and talked to him about where his family was and what he thought of this whole thing. I comforted him through his last hours until he died. That was the last person I saw. Now I’ve been searching for anyone new. But no people have shown. I even went to an abandoned radio station and sent out a message saying I have food at the building. I waited for five days and no one came. I left the food there.

After searching for weeks I gathered enough evidence to reasonably believe that I am the last man in North America. I was using a laptop I had found and all the web pages dated back to since the flu became real bad. People ranted about how the government is doing things wrong or how they are going to sue their neighbor for infecting them. After searching through a massive amount of those kinds of web pages I found one that had an update from the day before. I started communicating with these people from all around the world. We made a rule that no matter what we would go on at least once every two days. The only thing that would hold us back would be death. We called ourselves the Immune Society. I went on and nothing new had been posted. I waited two days and went back on. The Society was no more. Those, I am sure, were the last people on earth.

I am alone, utterly and entirely alone. My death will mean nothing. I have changed nothing. I am useless and I will die. But I pray, no I beg, that I am not the last. I ask that there will be someone else. I hope with all my heart that this will be true. Human kind will start again. It will. It must.

A Musician's War

Spoiler:

Red blood flew into the air as Jake slid into cover. Bullets flew above his head as his comrades were killed around him. He knew that breaking the German defenses was going to be hard but not this hard. Thoughts raced through his mind, things like never seeing his family again, losing the war or even being forced to surrender and getting tortured for the rest of his life. To calm himself he listened to the beat of the men running onto the shore. His heart thumped as he came out of the safety area of the sandbags and shot his rifle aimlessly. He quickly ducked back down behind the cover. His rifle was jammed. After a few minutes of wrestling with the gun he finally fixed it.

Jake took a deep breath before climbing over the sandbags and firing his gun then rushing to a trench that the Allies had cleared out. Crouching down in the trench Jake listened to the steady rhythm of the guns. It was almost like a piano song a musician was trying to learn. You have to listen to the song before you can memorize it. Artillery pounded the battle field as Jake figured out where the pauses were in the barrage of bullets. Throwing himself out of the trench he ran to another collection of sandbags. He was sure he had it memorized as he fired his gun of at some of the Germans.

Behind the cover Jake reloaded his gun without a mistake. Popping in and out of cover he lessened the amount of opposing enemies. It seemed he had become a master musician at this song of warfare. But even a master musician can make mistakes; and even one mistake could mess up the whole song.

It was his chance; he could finish this piano song amazingly. He rushed out of his cover pulling one of his grenades from his belt. He had pressed the wrong key. He could feel the song crumbling apart as a bullet pierced through his body. Falling to the ground the song had come to a complete stop. There was no more steady beat, no more colorful music. Just silence.